Mother Charged With Murder After Children Found Dead in Hotel Room

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An Arizona woman has been charged with two counts of murder by poison after the bodies of her two children were found in a Santa Ana hotel room, authorities said.

Marilyn Edge, 42, is being held without bail and is on suicide watch at the Santa Ana Jail, according to Santa Ana police.

She was arrested Saturday after attempting to ram her car into an electrical box outside a Home Depot store in Costa Mesa, police said.

“She had a propane tank in her vehicle. Apparently she thought that was going to make the vehicle explode. It didn’t,” said Cpl. Anthony Bertagna, spokesman for the Santa Ana Police Department.

When police arrived at the scene, he said, Edge was uncooperative and refused to exit her car. When officers tried to extricate her, “she was attempting to strangle herself with something around her neck,” Bertagna said.

After Edge was removed from the vehicle, she told authorities that her two dead children – identified in court documents as 10-year-old Faith and 13-year-old Jaelen – were at the Hampton Inn & Suites in nearby Santa Ana, police said. Officers rushed to the hotel, where they found the children’s bodies in a room on the third floor.

Edge was transported to Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach, treated and released into police custody.

No weapon was recovered at the scene, police said. A motive was not immediately known.

The children’s father, Mark Edge, of Marietta, Ga., had full custody of the children, authorities said. Marilyn Edge had been expected to return the children to Georgia over the weekend but never arrived.

Marilyn Edge reportedly sued the federal government in 2012, saying a vaccine caused her son to be autistic. The case was dismissed due to lack of evidence.